What are ‘responsible and regenerative cultures’?

What is the next culture about ?

The term ‘Responsible and Regenerative Cultures’ has 2 parts: ‘regenerative cultures’ and ‘responsible cultures’.

The ‘regenerative cultures’ comes from the Regenerative Development (RD) gameworld, particularly as introduced by Daniel Whal in “Designing Regenerative Cultures” that both PM and RD recognize: “The word ‘regenerative’ in ‘regenerative cultures’ refers — in part — to the cultures’ ability to regenerate and transform themselves in response to change. Most importantly it refers to the cultures’ ability to maintain and regenerate healthy ecosystems functions as the basis of true wealth and wellbeing.”

The ‘responsible cultures’ comes from the Possibility Management (PM) gameworld, particularly when PM defines the responsibility level of modern cultures as ‘child or irresponsible level’ — do the mess and someone else come to clean — and the next cultures as ‘adult’, ‘higher’ or ‘radical responsibility’ — PM is a gameworld with context in ‘radical responsibility’, meaning is the source of responsibility. RD is a gameworld with high level responsibility meaning that not ‘only cleans the messes that others create as it uses these messes as an opportunity to evolve, transform and regenerate’.

When we talk about ‘Responsible and Regenerative Cultures’ we are talking about Cultures, some in ‘adult context’, some in ‘high level responsibility context’ and some in ‘radical responsibility context’ that cleans their messes, use them as an opportunity to regenerate and seeing themselves as the source of responsibility — the ‘culture creatives’.

Let’s explore what ‘Responsible and Regenerative Cultures’ could mean or looks like through the eyes of different authors perspectives:

Otto Scharmer, author of Theory U and co-founder of the Presencing Institute talks about Society 4.0, which considers:

• Being Regenerative
• Individual and collective Awareness-based
• Co-created in Teams
• Learning from the future that wants to emerge (and not just from what we already know)

Daniel Whal, author of ‘Designing Regenerative Cultures’, defines a Regenerative Culture as “a culture that is consciously building the capacity of everybody in a particular place to respond and change and accepts transformation as something that life just “does”. And we need to get away from this idea that we can plan a sustainable future on a drawing board, then implement it, and then everything will be fine forever after. It’s a journey — we will never arrive. On that journey, we just have to keep asking the right questions and keep adapting our solutions and answers. So it’s not that solutions and answers are not important, but the questions are primary and all our solutions and answers should be implemented understanding that throughout human history, the solutions of the past have become the problems of today.” in resilence.org

Clinton Callahan, initiator of Possibility Management (PM), talks about ‘next cultures’, the ‘archerchy’, and what defines it:

• Archetypical gameworlds (which include Gaian gameworlds)
• Teams of 3 or more people
• Creative collaboration of initiated adults
• Leaderless
• Circular meeting technology
• Self-organized (collective/swarm intelligence)
• Based on ‘emptiness’ and ‘enlightenment’ // ‘nothing’ and love (instead of ‘knowing and ‘control’)
• Nonmaterial value

Jim Rutt (and colleagues) from Santa Fe Institute defined in 2013 the Game B (modern culture is Game A):

• Game B is the flag on the hill for an omni-win civilization that maximizes human flourishing.
• Game B is the environment that maximizes collective intelligence, collaboration, and increasing omni-consideration.
• Game B is building or developing the capacity to navigate complexity without resorting to complicated systems.
• Game B is establishing coherence within complex systems.
• Game B is a meta-protocol for hyper-collaboration.
• Game B is the infinite game where the purpose is to continue playing. Game A is the finite game where the purpose is to win.
• Game B is the theoretically optimal condition for creative collaboration and, thus, for maximal innovation.
• Game B must orient its primary innovation capacity towards cultivating individual and collective sovereignty. It must foster awareness of how choices show up and are decided, more than augmenting individual and collective power (Game A).
• Game B is a new mode of societal, economic, and political organization that leverages people’s authentic, long-term interests towards a healthier, more cooperative society and improved well-being. A Game B system is any cooperative, mutually-beneficial system that can outcompete exploitative, adversarial systems through manifest appeal and willful, voluntary participation.

Ken Wilber, initiator of Integral Theory, characterize the modern culture as a puzzle of different worldviews with 2/3 of world population in pre-modern worldviews (traditional or tribal) — society 1.0 — around 30% in modern rationalist (society 2.0) and postmodern pluralist (society 3.0) and less that 5% in integral (society 4.0). He argue that there are 3 big things happening in modern culture at the same time (he call this ‘culture wars’):

• People in pre-modern are going to modern rationalist
• People in modern rationalist are going to post modern pluralist
• A New tier is emerging, the second tier with integral perspectives and people from post modern pluralist are going to integral

Is this second tier that Schammer calls ‘Society 4.0’, Callahan ‘archearchy’ and Rutt ‘Game-B’. Charles Eisenstein calls the ‘age of aquarius’ using ‘water technologies’ (e.g. circle, permaculture) and the ‘story of interbeing’ to the second tier — in first tier, ‘fire technologies’ (e.g. hierarchies, industrial agriculture) and the ‘story of separation’, the ‘age of Pisces’.

The culture context elements that all the above authors (mentioned above) have in common are:

• Regenerative
• Human flourishing
• It’s about being in Teams
• Creative collaboration
• Taking advantage of the collective intelligence
• Is rooted in ‘not knowing’, nothingness’, ‘sourcing’ and includes ‘knowing’
• Collective awareness
• Self organized / Organic

PM introduces this dimension of initiated adults, meaning that people and gameworlds have at least a context of adult responsibility.

Wilber gives us this multi-level movement and Theory U highlights that ‘social fields’ co-created with people in different levels could engage in system change: ‘awareness based collective action’ and ‘awareness based system change’.

Whal helps to grasp the ‘regeneration’ with concrete examples and practices, some from modern rationalist, some from pos-modern pluralist, and some from integral.

‘Responsible and Regenerative Culture’ are plural, a multi-cultural landscape, with context in adult, high or radical responsibility, that embraces ‘nothing’ and ‘everything’, that initiated their adults, that cares for the wellbeing of Live and Planet Earth, including human communities, that individuals have their agency and function in teams to co-create Gaian Gameworlds that are in interconnected and interrelated.

Implicate yourself

All our articles are draft versions that invite co-creation. You might have something to add and/or suggest changes to the article, or you have questions you would like to reflect upon with us. It is important for us that you ground your sharings on your own reflected lived experiences. Thank you for joining us on this responsible and regenerative cultures pathfinder adventure.

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